Memeorandum

April 30, 2012

Proud to Be A (Native) American! (But Keep It Quiet...)

Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was proud to be a Native American prior to her hiring at Harvard Law School in the mid 90's. After that, she mysteriously stopped listing herself as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools desk book.

I have no doubt she retained her pride in her ethnic status (whatever it was), but having ridden the Affirmative Action train to the end of the line at Harvard Law she wanted to avoid any taint of being an affirmative action hire. Just a guess, obviously - I don't want to be defaming someone with a legal background.

Jim Geraghty has more. I believe it was David Bernstein who first cracked open the old AALS directories (although an intrepid reporter may have moved independently) and he has informed speculation as well.

For my money, Ms. Warren is one more liberal who will defend Affirmative Action passionately, will pooh-pooh the notion of an Affirmative Action stigma, and will deny that Affirmative Action played any role in her own advancement. Whether this costs her votes in Massachusetts, where the Irish do not benefit from Affirmative Action, remains to be seen.

In all fairness, she may have discovered that her heritage was NOT Native American/Indian. I did recently.

We'd always been told that we were part Indian on my dad's side.

Turns out that my ancestor, Wild Indian Billy, had been kidnapped from his home, along with his mother and sisters, and held captive for many years. No genetic connection, just enough knowledge of their culture to work as a scout for the Army after his escape.

So, I guess I can instead claim descent from slaves - those taken from their home to work without pay for their slaveowners. His sisters had children by tribal members, so late in life, when finally able to leave, they chose to return - otherwise, they would have been separated from the only family they had known. A sad choice to have to make.

what a story, Linda, but I don't think that's Warren's case. I think the evidence points to a second rate scholar who used the fact that she was a woman AND a minority to game the system and once she'd done so, and could no longer benefit from that dropped the pretense.

Much should be made of it. It was fraud--just more evidence of the lawlessness of this administration--but it shows te stupidity of the "diversity" demands. Was she more or less diverse once she dropped the claim that she was Indian?

Actually, I think DOJ's Ronald Weich having perjured himself before the Issa committee on Fast and Furious, and planning to become dean of the law school at Univ. of Baltimore should also be cut off at the pass, in Cowboys and Indians speak.

When they discovered there was gold in them thar hills that was as far as they got.

My 2nd cousin swears we have cherokee blood from a very long time ago. It only comes up though as the explanation for which of the cousins and their children seem to revert to same tendency to go bronze fast when exposed to sunlight. I think it is fairly common if your ancestors have been running around N Ga for 200 years or so.

"... For reference, I'm an 18 year old white guy.) So I was out in the poorer parts of my city canvassing for a political campaign. ... Around the end of the shift, 2 teenagers approached me, one about 17 and one about 15. ... Then they approached me again asking for a flyer. ... Then he pulled out a gun and said "give me all of your money." They were laughing and smiling while doing it, so I figured this wasn't a serious situation. The gun looked fake to me, they were around my age, maybe a bit younger, and I figured they just were looking for an easy target that would give away there money at a snap (especially because I am skinny and white). I also thought they would just expect me to give my stuff up and if I didn't, would just walk away. I thought I was being punked, so I called him on his bluff, and started to walk away. He shoved me back, then threw a punch square in my jaw. After that, he pistol whipped me in the mouth (sure as hell didn't feel fake then), and I could feel my teeth floating in my mouth. Right then I decided to run, and he chased me. I had to hop fences and run through backyards, and ended up behind a tree and a shed for about 15 minutes until I felt safe enough to leave. I went to a house where I called the police and my parents to come pick me up. An elderly man saw me runnng away from him and his friends (he brought around 4 more to chase me) and called the police. Around 10 police were combing the area looking for me and the suspects. My phone was dead, so while I was hiding, I was pretty much scared shitless. ... "

This is a fair scandal, it seems to me. At the very least, Warren, by claiming minority status or having it claimed oon her behalf, crowded out some other minority person out of a job. Whether she would have gotten the job "anyway" is a bit beside the point. She willingly took a minority spot, which meant that her employer probably hired one less minority person.

There are apocryphal stories of our family having married into the Nez Perce - or, alternatively, that we are indeed part Nez Perce (this latter tale is almost certainly untrue.)

Whatever investigation we have done has fallen short of DNA analysis (note - my father's family was from somewhere in Vilna - they and all others like them were murdered in WWII - it is my mother's family from Minsk and Odessa that seems to have found its way to the USA by way of the Bering Strait and it is they who we believe encountered and may have married into the Paceful People as they descended from Alaska into the continental 48.)

There is a photograph of a Nez Perce Chief, from the 19th century that looks amazingly similar to Yours Truly.

In any case, whether for the electorate of Massachusetts this is something or a giant nothing-burger, time will tell.

--A skinny white guy who has just been pistol whipped outruns a black kid in a strange neighborhood? Wow, speaking for skinny white guys everywhere, I find this heartening. Fear lent him wings.--

Indeed. Was tossing some substantial green tomatoes, mortar like, at passing vehicles as a lad from about forty yards away. After a couple of bracketing rounds, target and warhead converged with a good sized bang and fear was the wind beneath my wings as I next found myself standing in a field about 200 yards away my only memory being a roll through a barbed wire fence at speed.

That from a geezer with a broken rear view mirror. Can only imagine the motivation of being involuntarily entered in a steeple chase, pursuit supplied by a hotted up armed gang.

I think what Warren did is a good thing, and more people should do it. Think Cloward-Piven on steroids.

Why wait for the Supreme Court to strike down Affirmative Action? If everyone scoured their ancestry in search of the slightest shred of evidence that one of their forbears would qualify as a favored minority in today's America, and then claimed this status on government forms, the AA rolls would increase dramatically.

When 100% of Americans are protected minorities, the system will finally be fair.

--This is a fair scandal, it seems to me. At the very least, Warren, by claiming minority status or having it claimed on her behalf, crowded out some other minority person out of a job.--

If she was really qualified for AA because she really has Indian blood, what's the scandal?
AA itself is a national scandal and disgrace but why should she be singled out for using it?
If she was lying, different story of course.

OK, here's the calculus: If she does have Indian blood, it's a massive own goal. If she called herself Indian in good faith, it's a loser meme. If she called herself Indian in bad faith, it will be difficult to prove, and sympathy will lie with her otherwise.

Being from Caddo country, one would think my lurking ancestor would have been Caddo, but not so. She was Cherokee. I think the Cherokee must have been more likely to marry a white man or white woman. My theory on why there are so many with Cherokee ancestors.

As I mentioned on another thread a couple of days ago, I had an uncle who was 100% full blooded Cherokee. His only daughter (my cousin) is blond, blue-eyed, fair skinned and has no marked bone structure that shows her 1/2 Cherokee. Her mother's sister - my Mom - was dark haired, brown eyed, and during the summer - quite brown skinned. Appearances can be deceiving.

She cannot prove she is native american, and is taking a slot from someone who probably has a better claim. In other words, her unprovable claim of minority status either got her a job she would not have otherwise received, or allowed her employer to claim that they were diverse enough, thank you very much, and denied someone with a more authentic minority claim a job.

Either way, Warren, big time booster of equality, gamed the system to benefit herself at the expense of some unknown member of the 99%. Alinsky would endorse making her a target, because she is not living up to her ideals.

Wikipedia says "according to family lore". I can trace my ancestry back to the Cherokee woman that was my ggggggrandmother. Why can't she? It wasn't even family lore that sent me looking. I was shocked to find her sitting there in my family tree.

I disagree, because this case points out the total fraudulance of the concept of Afirmative Action. AA is supposed to be a system to help easily identifiable groups to overcome a cultural legacy of deliberate discrimination against them. If someone is lilly white, and has a name like Ward Churchill or Elizabeth Warren, the idea that they are entitled to AA status, simply because they have 1/8th or 1/16th Native American blood is hard to get people to buy.

It also speaks to the personal ethics of an individual who would use an advantage which they, if they were "true" liberals, would think they don't deserve and advantage themselves to the detriment of a "real" minority candidate for a job.

I do know two people with Indian heritage. One(Cherokee descent) was a former marine who held a high CIA position. One of his inherited traits was a bone structure that made it impossible for him to float..he had an impossible time passing Dartmouth's mandatory swim test.

The other was a girl whose family claimed Lumbe inheritance.The Lumbes are not recognized by the Dept of Interior, some claiming they were just a group who'd intermarried with blacks and when the govt agents came to do a head count claimed they belonged to the Lumbe tribe .

If Warren is not of Indian heritage and she said she was to get scholarship money, that is fraud. In the years she went to school, saying you are an Indian could reap a whole lot of money, and as we can see from her resume, jobs.

WE should demand to see her applications - (along with the president's applications) to make sure she didn't commit fraud.

It reminds me of that lefty who made fun of me for not getting my education free (that TM graciously made a thread about). It's the mindset of the left to screw government to get more from government. And then they go into government to screw the rest of us on its behalf.

Warren’s claim, which surfaced yesterday after a Herald inquiry, put the candidate in an awkward position as campaign aides last night scrambled but failed to produce documents proving her family lineage. Aides said the tales of Warren’s Cherokee and Delaware tribe ancestors have been passed down through family lore.

My wife, interestingly, is in a similar position to Warren. She has the family lore which would make her 1/8th or 1/16th creek, but she is a pale redhead that makes her look like the whoitest white woman in the world. She does not check the native american box on all those applications, because she says it would be rediculous to do so.

"ebgodard
I think Ms Warren is in big trouble. In just a few hours I traced her maternal lineage back to her great great grandparents. Great Great- George Washington Bowen (1828-1880) and Bethany Clark(1829-1880) Great (Joseph H. Reed(Ohio) &Charity Louise Gorman(Illinois); John Huston Crawford and Paulina Anne Bowen. Grandparents Harry Gunn Reed and Bethanie Elvina Crawford. Hmmm. Does not appear to be any native americans here. Just saying."

Ranger, I once got into an argument in the genealogy room of the Minneapolis Public Library's main branch that involved fractional Indian heritage. The other fellow started bragging about his 1/32 Indian heritage, and trashing me for descending from those who wronged the Indians. However, all of my people came here from Norway after the Indians had been subdued, and most of the other guy's ancestry was precisely what one would expect to be the groups who actually did fight the Indians. I was not surprised to learn that the other guy was also a radical Democrat.

Unless you are very proficient in geneaology tracing you can get those trees wrong especially if using Ancestry.Com. Unless you are using the Mormon archives for members of LDS. The rest depend on public records such as births, marriage, death, census. You'd be surprised how many people with the same first and last name are born in the same State in the same year. Get one wrong and it screws up the whole sequence.

I know, since my English cousin is a family lineage expert and has done research for years in this area both in England and the USA. My other cousin in Australia does the same for a living and is shocked at how wrong people get their tracings doing it themselves and turn to her to figure out.

Just saying. Egbodard could have it perfect or it could be totally wrong.

Just how far back should you have to go to claim Native American status? I think I should really look into this AA stuff because who knows? I might be the ggggggranddaughter of a Cherokee princess. Another way of looking at this is my great, great grandfather's grandmother was full blood Cherokee. So how do you get the percentage of Indian blood I have from that?

A fun side to this Indian stuff. My dad (full blooded Norske) grew up next to the Colville Res. He played with kids there that were from several tribes including Nez Perce. When he was about 12 (about the end of WW I) an Indian woman took him and a few others off to learn to hunt and fish. I still have the beaded buckskin gloves she made him.

"In Texas there is a town called New Braunfels , where there is a large German-speaking population. One day, a local rancher driving down a country road noticed a man using his hand to drink water from the rancher's stock pond.

"Actually, I think DOJ's Ronald Weich having perjured himself before the Issa committee on Fast and Furious, and planning to become dean of the law school at Univ."

IMO, BR @08:35 has the more important story of the day. Here is a leftist propaganda spreader who having become a liability for the Obama regime is put back into academica to train more leftists. Meanwhile, having plenty of time and money to refine his efforts to defeat America for the next time the leftists call him to government service.

Cherokee. It is always Cherokee blood that people think they have lurking in their gene pool. Why not Navaho, or Arapaho, or Sioux, or Nez Perce, or some of the other tribes?

I think it is the level of out-marriage. Drove across the Navajo reservation a couple of days ago, and I swear that you can distinguish Navajo from Hopi, who live right next to each other. And, on occasion, you would see a Native American who was from neither tribe. They stuck out. I think a generation or two along with intermarriage, and these differences would disappear, at least between these two tribes, as well as maybe some other later arrivals.

The Cherokee seem to have out-married a lot, esp. in comparison with other tribes. And, this, I think, is that they assimilated a lot more than other tribes, at least before they were forcibly dispossessed of their prime farmland.

Shared an office with one guy, and worked with his brother too, both claiming 1/4 Cherokee. Other than coming from Oklahoma, you wouldn't expect it, looking at or talking with them (until the Trail of Tears comes up). Maybe a tiny bit of skin color and facial structure with the older brother, but not even that with the brother I officed with.

Have known others claiming Cherokee blood, but none who could claim growing up with the Cherokee ancestor. But, then, think of when the Trail of Tears was (1830). I would expect that a significant number of those from the deep south legitimately claiming Cherokee ancestry left the tribe (or out married) before then. And, that would mean very thin Indian blood. Esp. note that in more than 6 generations, it is unlikely that they would have any Cherokee nucleic DNA (2**6=64, and we have 46 chromosomes) whatsoever unless descended straight on the male line all the way down (for the Y chromosome). Maybe mitocondrial DNA - if descended straight on the female line all the way down - which is how Native Americans have been traced to different parts of Asia, depending on when their ancestors came here.

I think the reason there was so much intermarriage between whites and Cherokees was that they were one of the "civilized" tribes. They read and wrote English, and from the earliest days of the Republic had adopted many of the settlers' ways, with encouragement from the government.

The dance Hall in Gruene is hopping on Weekend nights too. Sue si correct the Grist Mill is worth standing in line for, which you used to have to do regularly when I lived in San Antonio. Its been awhile, not sure if that is true still or not.

Tks for the Watergate link, Narciso. Will read it later. But I still say Mark Felt was not Woodward's Deep Throat. I think it was Dean, hiding in plain sight, even advising Leonard Garment for his book, "In Search of Deep Throat." Have a video clip from years ago when Bradlee, Dean and Woodward appeared on the same TV show and Bradlee practically said it was Dean. After that, the Felt "outing" was just cover up again and Felt's not alive to contradict them.

WASHINGTON — Former presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush have united — in their hatred of Jimmy Carter.

The former commanders-in-chief share a disdain for their fellow ex-president because he conducted foreign policy after leaving office without any authority from the White House, according to a new book.

In “The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity,” former staffers even use the word “treason” to describe Carter’s actions.